Learn Hardcore Norwegian: Jeg mottar en e-post fra sjefen.

mottar means “to receive.” It’s more formal and often appears in written or business Norwegian. får literally means “to get” and is more colloquial; in everyday speech you might say Jeg fikk en e-post (“I got an email”) instead of Jeg mottok en e-post.

Why is e-post hyphenated, and what gender is it?

e-post is a direct loan from English email, and the official Bokmål spelling uses a hyphen. It’s a common-gender noun, so its indefinite form is en e-post and its definite form is e-posten.

Why do we say en e-post but sjefen has an -en ending?

Both e-post and sjef are common-gender nouns. In the indefinite you use the article en (en e-post, en sjef). To make them definite you attach the article as a suffix: e-posten (“the email”) and sjefen (“the boss”).

Why is the sentence in the present tense mottar, when in English we’d say “I am receiving”?

Norwegian doesn’t have a separate progressive tense. The simple present mottar covers both “(I) receive” and “(I am) receiving.” To express past you’d use mottok (preterite), har mottatt (present perfect), or the past of få, fikk.

Can I say av sjefen instead of fra sjefen?

No. fra means “from” and indicates source. av is used to mark the agent in passive constructions (e.g., E-posten ble sendt av sjefen – “The email was sent by the boss”). In active voice you use fra sjefen.

Does fra require any special case on sjefen?

Modern Norwegian Bokmål has largely lost noun cases. Prepositions like fra don’t trigger a case change, so you simply use the noun’s normal (definite or indefinite) form.

How do you pronounce sjefen, since sj and j look confusing?

In Bokmål, sj is pronounced [ʃ], like the English “sh” in “shop.” The j doesn’t add a /j/ sound here. So sjefen is pronounced roughly SHEH-fen.